


come back (i still need you)

by heavenlyshadows



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Good Friend Kiara (Outer Banks), Hurt JJ (Outer Banks), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, JJ (Outer Banks) Needs a Hug, JJ (Outer Banks)-centric, Kiara (Outer Banks) Needs a Hug, Luke Maybank's A+ Parenting, Pope (Outer Banks) Needs a Hug, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25798087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenlyshadows/pseuds/heavenlyshadows
Summary: John B’s been gone for an hour when the Pogues find out that he and Sarah didn’t make it.And JJ's angry.He’s angry and sad and scared because John B can’t be gone. He’s been the only constant in JJ’s fucked up life for eight years. He's always been there.JJ doesn’t know how to live in a world without John B.
Relationships: JJ & John B. Routledge, JJ & Kiara & Pope & John B. Routledge
Comments: 2
Kudos: 68





	come back (i still need you)

**Author's Note:**

> Mentions of abuse. If this triggers you please take care of yourself and don't read it. 
> 
> The title comes from the song Hold On by Chord Overstreet.

John B’s been gone for an hour when the Pogues find out that he and Sarah didn’t make it.

Shoupe comes into the tent with two other officers, soaking wet from the rain, and even though JJ knows, he chooses to deny, deny, deny. 

Until Kiara says it. 

So what, they’re dead? 

JJ sees red. 

He’s running at Shoupe, screaming and fighting, and he’s not thinking about the consequences of attacking a cop because he’s angry. He’s angry and sad and scared because John B can’t be gone. He’s been the only constant in JJ’s fucked up life, always patched him up, always given him somewhere to stay when he had nowhere else to go, always been there. 

JJ doesn’t know how to live in a world without John B. 

Pope and Kie’s parents come. 

Luke doesn’t. 

JJ’s glad for it. He knows the next time he sees his dad, he’s dead, and Pope and Kie can only afford to lose one friend right now. 

He isn’t expecting Pope’s dad to hug him. Heyward has always made it very clear what kind of influence he thinks JJ is on his son, but now he’s holding him and telling him that it’s going to be ok and for the first time in eight years, JJ breaks down in front of someone who isn’t John B.

It’s never going to be John B again. 

Because John B is dead.

-

John B’s been gone for three days when JJ destroys the Chateau. 

He doesn’t go there intending to destroy it.

He’s been slumming it on Kie’s couch since she blatantly refuses to let him go home, and he’s run out of clothes. He also knows that soon the place will be crawling with cops, and the last thing he, who’s still on parole, needs is for them to find out what other illegal activities he and his friend have been up to. He walks around with a trash bag, throwing out beer cans and half-smoked joints. He’s just about finished when he sees it. 

It’s a picture Sarah took the day they found the gold at Parcel 9. It was taken on her phone, held at an angle so you could see all five of them crammed into the van, grinning from ear to ear at the amazing thing they had just done.

John B’s stupid ass framed it, and JJ feels a tidal wave of rage sneak up on him as he hurls it across the room. 

He sweeps his arm over the coffee table, knocking papers and books to the floor, and when that isn’t enough, he upends the table. He knocks over the bookshelf, rips the pictures off the walls, smashes the CD’s Big John collected but never once listened to. He tears apart the pullout couch and rips the curtains from the windows. He punches the wall again and again and doesn’t stop until his hand is covered in blood, and he’s kneeling on the floor sobbing.

It takes him hours to pick himself up, and when he does, he doesn’t clean up the mess he’s made. He doesn’t throw the forgotten garbage bag in the trash. He doesn’t even grab his stuff.

He just leaves.

-

John B’s been gone for almost three weeks when JJ’s dad nearly kills him.

He has to go home despite Pope and Kie’s protests. He’s been couch hopping between their houses since John B died, and he knows that if he doesn’t go back on his own, his dad is going to track him down and drag him back.

Kiara offers to drive him, but he refuses. He can’t risk something happening to her because he made the mistake of avoiding his dad for this long.

And what a stupid mistake it was. 

He can tell that Luke is angry the second he walks through the door. From a distance, he seems calm. What gives him away is the tension stretched across his shoulder blades, the way he sets the tool in his hand down a little too aggressively. His tone is razor-edged as he says, “Where have you been, son?”

The worst beatings always start like this. Then JJ says or does the wrong thing, and before he has a chance to react, there’s a fist flying towards his face. 

And the hits don’t stop. 

Even when he’s on the ground, unable to do much more than curl in a ball and wait for it to be over. 

Even when he feels his ribs snap and he screams out in pain. 

The hits don’t stop even when JJ passes out, and his last conscious thought is: He’s going to kill me.

He doesn’t remember his dad leaving. 

He doesn’t remember Pope and Kie coming to the house because he hasn’t answered his phone all day. 

He doesn’t remember them driving him to the hospital after finding him in a pool of his own blood. 

But they’re all there when he wakes up; Pope, Kiara, even Heyward. 

And while he’s glad they’re there, none of them are the person he wants to see.

He wants to be at the Chateau, not in the hospital. The nurses have horrified looks on their faces when they see the scars from John B’s messy stitching jobs because no, this isn’t the first time this has happened to him. He wants to be on the pullout, smoking weed and watching the newest episode of Brooklyn-Nine-Nine instead of in a hospital bed, answering the questions he’s spent eight years trying to avoid. 

He wants John B. 

-  
John B’s been gone for a month and a half when school starts again. 

The school put up memorials for both John B and Sarah. Sarah’s is overflowing with flowers and candles and notes of farewell, but John B’s has barely been touched. 

It was the same at their “funerals.” Practically everyone in town was at Sarah’s even though they were burying an empty casket. There were only ten people at John B’s; Shoupe, John B’s uncle, Mr. Sunn, the Pogues, and their families. 

It makes JJ so fucking angry.

Everyone loved Sarah Cameron, but no one gives a fuck about John B because she was a Kook and he was a Pogue. 

JJ hates that it makes him resent Sarah. 

He doesn’t want to resent her. And he doesn’t want to resent John B for loving her so much that he dragged her to the bottom of the ocean with him.

So he avoids it. 

Shoupe catches him after he’s missed two weeks of school, and JJ wonders how he found him tucked so far back in the woods at the Pogues old lookout. 

“You have to go to class JJ. That was part of the deal.” 

When JJ had healed enough to be released from the hospital, Shoupe promised him that he could stay on the island with Pope and Kiara if he followed the rules. 

Right now, JJ doesn’t give a fuck about the rules.

“I don’t have to do anything. I don’t take orders, especially not from you.” he practically spits as he shoves past the sheriff towards his bike. The ride up was painful as fuck for his ribs, but he couldn’t stand to be in Pope’s house anymore. Or at school. Or at the Chateau, which he still hadn’t cleaned. The HMS Pogue was still docked there, but even the thought of taking it out on the water where his best friend's corpse was just rotting away made JJ feel sick.

He’s spiraling, and he knows it. Everyone knows it, especially Pope and Kiara. They’d been hovering over him since he got out of the hospital, the worried glances they had been shooting him before he went to his dad's only getting worse after he came back. They tried to help, suggesting he catch up on his classes or go back to work. Just do anything to get off of Pope's couch. He thinks that’s how Shoupe found him. 

Fucking snitches.

“JJ-” Shoupe sighed.

“No.” JJ whirls around instantly, his blood boiling. “You think you’re helping me by not calling DCS and having them haul my ass to the mainland, but you know what would have helped? If you hadn’t gotten my best friend killed. What would help is if Rafe and Ward Cameron were running from swarms of cops because they killed people. But no, they’re sitting in Tanneyhill, playing the victim because they’re Kooks. And Kooks always win.” 

Shoupe’s eyes are shining, but JJ doesn’t feel bad. John B would still be alive if he hadn’t been so determined to pin something on the “troublemaking Pogue,” and JJ needs him to feel it. 

“You’re right, JJ,” Shoupe’s voice wavered. “But do you think this is helping you or your friends? Do you think John B would be proud?”

JJ doesn’t answer because he already knows John B wouldn’t be at all. 

Knowing it fucking sucks. 

Disappointing John B is almost worse than him being gone, so JJ goes to class the next day. He catches up, with Kie and Pope’s help, and does well. He picks up extra shifts at the Wreck and with Heyward. He goes back to the Chateau and finally puts it back together. 

He picks up the pieces. Not all of them but a few. 

And it’s good. 

-

John B’s been gone for two months when the cops show up at the Wreck and ask JJ, Kiara, and Pope to follow them outside.

They don’t answer any questions until they're in the police cruiser driving towards the station. 

“You’re not in trouble,” Shoupe says. “We just want to talk to you about Sarah and John B.”

“We already told you everything about what happened.” Kiara snaps.

“I know you did, but we didn’t tell you everything.”

All three of them stare, confused. 

“We found the Phantom about a week ago,” 

JJ feels his heart sink.

“There were no life jackets in it and no bodies in or around the boat. So I put a BOLO out to police stations in surrounding cities. Two days ago, I got a hit.” 

“Some fishermen said they pulled two kids out of the water after their boat capsized in a storm two months ago. Local police found them in a hotel not far from the airport. They flew back into the OBX thirty minutes ago.”

JJ’s brain is short-circuiting, bouncing between distrust, relief, and anger. John B is alive, has been for months, and never reached out to let them know. No letter, no phone call. Absolute radio silence. How could he do that to them? How could he sit there, no doubt knowing that they were suffering, and just let it happen? 

His resentment fizzles out when Shoupe pulls into the station, and he sees them. 

John B and Sarah, standing on the curb. 

He’s out of the car before it even stops, sprinting across the parking lot, yelling John B’s name. 

His hair is longer than JJ remembers. There’s a ghost of a beard on his chin and a scar above his eyebrow that wasn’t there before. But the eyes that instantly lock with his are the same. The shit-eating grin he flashes as JJ throws himself at John B is the same. 

Soon Kie, Pope, and Sarah have joined in on the hug, and they’re all crying, but it isn’t sad. 

Because it’s John B. 

John B’s been gone for two months.

But now he’s home.


End file.
